For Better or Worse
by sophiedoodle
Summary: The ramifications of the episode "Hunters" on the crew of Voyager.
1. Chapter 1

For Better or Worse

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

_Author's Note: This story takes place directly following the episode "Hunters." This will be a multi-chapter story written from the POV of various characters._

_Tom_

Tom Paris sat hunched on the steps in front of the wall-sized viewscreen in Astrometrics. It was late, 0330 hours, and the room was dark except for the light sprinkling from the view of a thousand, a million stars spread across the vast screen of the universe. The consoles were only dimly lit by auxiliary power, and even Seven of Nine had long since retired to her alcove to regenerate. The careful chaos of the past few days, steeped in hopes and fears, was over. The last possible message had been downloaded through the array mere seconds before its destruction.

And then there was the message from his father. Or rather, there wasn't. It had been lost as the datastream destabilized from the energy released by the quantum singularity.

Part of him felt relieved, the icy tightness in his belly finally dissipating. However, it left in its wake something else. A hollowness in his chest that spoke only of disappointment. Such a contradiction. Although, he reflected wryly, his relationship with his father had forever been wrought with such incongruity, a tangible battle of give and take, ebb and flow. So why should he be surprised to find these feelings still plaguing him even in the Delta Quadrant?

Tom balanced his elbows on his knees and pushed his hands tiredly through his blond hair. Despite the exhaustion that crept through him, he hadn't been able to sleep so after spending half the night staring morosely at the ceiling, he had made his way here. He had wanted to be alone. But not in his quarters. And so, in desperation, he had made his way to Astrometrics where he had lost himself in the stars for a time.

He thought about what Chakotay had said earlier, about the news of Voyager coming as such a shock to those they'd left behind. Of it shattering the fragile resolve of those who had finished their grieving process. He thought about how his father might have finally settled his feelings towards his son. Perhaps it had been easier with Tom gone, easier for his father to come to terms with all the disappointments, all the shortcomings, all the embarrassments. All the ways in which his son would never be like him. Perhaps his father had even felt regret. There was no way of knowing.

But what did his father feel now? Now that he knew Voyager was still out there. Now that he knew his son was still alive, a member of the crew, the ship's pilot and a senior officer. Would his father be grateful for the slightest opportunity of a reunion? Or would he be plagued by the fact that he might one day have to face his son again and perhaps deconstruct the legend that had been built up around the lost Voyager crew?

He sat there, silent and irresolute, thinking about what he had gained that day and what he had also lost. And it wasn't just him. Most of the crew members, Starfleet and Maquis alike, had received communications from their families or friends. For some there had been welcome news. Neelix had been teasing Tuvok about his newly arrived grandchild. Harry's parents had been thrilled to learn that their only child was still alive. And Tom had seen Joe Carey grinning broadly as he strode down a corridor, clutching a PADD in his hands like a lifeline.

But there were others for whom those messages from home hadn't been a panacea, those for whom communication from the Alpha Quadrant had brought little but misery. He shuddered as he recalled the anguish on B'Elanna's face earlier in the day when she had told him about the demise of the Maquis. Chakotay's eyes were haunted, and the gentle friendliness that was his trademark had been replaced by a subdued determination. But the worst was Captain Janeway. She had arrived for Neelix's party on her first officer's arm and had made a decided effort to add to the festivities. But her grip on her emotions was tenuous; he had caught her rapidly blinking away tears more than once during a quiet moment when she thought no one was observing.

He wondered if it had all been worth it. Would there be anything to help them in the data that Starfleet had sent, something that could bring them home just that much sooner? He wondered, too, about the Hirogen. It seemed like they made more enemies than friends here in the Delta Quadrant, and the Hirogen had been no exception. And he wondered if this opportunity for communication would end up making them all feel closer to home or if this brief glimpse of what they'd lost would make the Alpha Quadrant seem even further away. Almost like a tease, close enough to tantalize but not close enough to touch. Was it better than knowing they were alone out here?

He wasn't sure.

To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

For Better or Worse

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

_B'Elanna_

B'Elanna slammed the heel of her hand into the face of the Cardassian on her right, feeling the satisfying crunch of bone breaking, the lash of his head whipping backwards upon impact. He stumbled for a moment and his companion took up his place, grabbing her arm before she could hit him as well. But for the moment she was indomitable, and she felled him, too, with a well-placed kick to the stomach. She felt her first opponent regain his equilibrium and advance, but she caught him on the rebound with her elbow and relished the biting crack of his ribs absorbing her blow. He fell back on the ground next to his partner and lay there, quite still and silent, although she knew instinctively he was merely gathering his strength for his next offensive.

She took a step backwards, breathing heavily and wiping a hand across her mouth. Her knuckles were split and bloody, her uniform tank top plastered to her torso with sweat. She wasn't quite sure how long she had actually been in the holodeck, but over a dozen Cardassians in various states of injury lay scattered throughout the jungle-like scenery. She hoped that no one would come to claim any holodeck appointments—most likely the crew was still at Neelix's impromptu party, celebrating their first communication with the Alpha Quadrant in four years.

B'Elanna had skipped the party entirely, knowing beforehand that she would hear about it from Tom in the morning and, most likely, Chakotay as well. Or maybe he was too wrapped up in his own sorrow to worry about her lack of sociality. _Chakotay_. B'Elanna didn't think she would ever forget the haunted look in his eyes when he had come to her. He had tried to be strong, tried to be comforting, but it was almost a habitual afterthought as if only a hollow part of him remained standing. She knew that all the former Maquis would be shattered. Their friends were gone, the cause they had fought for obliterated. But worse than that was the duality of their lives on Voyager. They had become something even more in the Delta Quadrant, every one of them. They had used and transcended their own talents and personalities to become freedom fighters of a different kind—warriors who fought for their day-to-day existence in a foreign land that was often deceitful and hostile. Soldiers who engaged in a more figurative battle for their homelands—and their right and desire to go back to them.

What ate at her soul, and maybe all of theirs, was knowing that their lives, in so many ways, were so much better here, that they were happier, safer, than they had ever been in the Alpha Quadrant. They had left the fight behind, left others to win the war. But their comrades had lost, they had died, and there was nothing left.

Except for those who remained on Voyager.

But what would there be when they returned home? There would be absolutely nothing they could do, no vengeance to take, no wrongs to be righted. It was simply over. And in an incredible turn of circumstance, the Maquis on Voyager had become the lucky ones. They had even become Starfleet. It was unthinkable.

Part of her wanted to rip off her lieutenant's rank bar, fling it across the room or maybe across the galaxy as far as it would go. Far enough that she could forget it had ever been a part of her. She wanted to forget Starfleet, and she wanted to forget everyone and everything that was associated with it.

But at the same time, she didn't. Because they were her best friends, her mentors. And Tom.

She wished they had never made contact with the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager had been a better home to her then anywhere else in her life. All she wanted was to recapture the feelings of peace, of belonging, that had finally become an integral part of who she was inside. Since Chakotay's visit to Engineering, that hard-won contentment had fled, replaced by a mind-ravaging rage that was somehow worse than it had ever been before. Or maybe it only felt like that because she now had something else to compare it to.

She hit, kicked, punched Cardassian after Cardassian, hoping that if she fought hard enough and long enough that her heart would somehow succumb as well, that she could crush the anger beneath her, curb its swell before it became all that she was. And so she kept on, knowing more surely with each blow that her fury was never going to lessen, never going to go away. Because what had happened to the Maquis was never going to go away.

But she kept fighting anyway until she felt absolutely nothing.

_To be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3

For Better or Worse

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

_Kathryn_

Kathryn Janeway turned over onto her stomach for perhaps the twentieth time that night, burying her face in her pillow and wishing she could bury her thoughts just as easily. It was strange and downright unnerving, all the feelings, doubts, _fears_ that their communication from the Alpha Quadrant had unearthed. Especially for her, who had practically been making a career out of ignoring her emotions for the past four years. She lifted her head and opened her eyes for a moment to glance at the solitary PADD resting on her bedside table, a movement that had become habitual since she had first received its disquieting message only hours before.

Logically, intellectually, and even somewhere in her heart, Kathryn knew that Mark would have moved on. She would never have expected him to still be clinging to her ghost four years after she had disappeared. It was standard procedure for Starfleet to declare a missing crew dead after a year of silence. Perhaps there had been the tiniest fragment of hope still lodged in his heart even after the memorial service.

But not after four long years.

But she, out here on Voyager, _knowing_ that she was alive, knowing that they could make it back tomorrow—or maybe never—had no finite line of no return drawn for her recovery. There was no definitive day that bespoke of a finale. And so she had gone day to day, holding Mark to her like a fragile secret that only she could keep because she had no way of knowing when her time was up.

It was an endless holding on.

How did one come to the obvious end of something that was currently in limbo anyway? There was no impetus to make such a decision. Was she supposed to just wake up one morning and decide—_today's the day_? Mark and I are finished. I'm breaking our engagement. That made no logical sense. Perhaps it should have been a gradual letting go. But how were you supposed to know when the last vestiges had slipped through your fingers?

Maybe the easiest time to do it would have been back on New Earth. When Chakotay had offered her his heart and all that he was.

But she had been scared. Scared of who he was, and of who she was, and of who she was when she was with him. She had never been so utterly, so completely _Kathryn_ since the first day she'd stepped through the doors of Starfleet Academy and especially since becoming the captain of a ship stuck seventy thousand light years away from where it belonged. And it scared the hell out of her.

And in the oddest way, she still would have felt like she was being unfaithful to Mark. Not because _he_ would still be holding on, but rather because _she _had been unable—or maybe just unwilling—to let go. Moving on in the heat of the moment, basking in the warmth of Chakotay's confession, would have felt intrinsically wrong to her, like one fateful night of giving in to temptation. She owed Mark more than that. She owed it to herself, too.

And so she had continued to hold on to Mark or maybe merely to the idea of him, if nothing more than to prove to herself that she was still a woman somewhere beneath the persona of Captain Janeway. To prove to herself that there was something else there besides a never-ending round of meetings and reports and late nights with her own company.

Now she felt like she had nothing left to hold on to, even though she wanted Chakotay, loved Chakotay, in a way she'd never loved Mark. Mark had been certainty. Especially, inexplicably, with him seventy thousand light years away. That Chakotay loved her was sure enough—and she, him. But could they—_she—_make it work?

_Did she even want to try?_

Kathryn gave up trying to sleep, slipped into her uniform, and trudged back up to the bridge where there was a stack of PADDs waiting silently for her on top of her desk.

_To be continued…_


	4. Chapter 4

For Better or Worse

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

Author's Note: Special thanks goes to Marauder for her encouragement and timely advice with this chapter!

_Chakotay_

Chakotay wanted to scream. He wanted to throw things until they shattered and hurl curses to the furthest ends of the galaxy. But instead he sat rigid on the floor of his quarters with his head cradled in his hands, trying to breathe and remind himself that there were good reasons that he was still alive.

He couldn't believe that it had happened to him again. This hand that life had carelessly tossed at him was just too cruel. Twice. Twice he hadn't been there when the people he called his own had been destroyed by the brutality of the Cardassians. Twice he was left with only the wreckage to sift through his fingers.

And now he was so far away that retribution was only a vague concept skittering through his brain. There would be no second chance this time. No opportunity to cool the fires that burned within him by standing up and fighting the ones who had torched the blazes in the first place.

This time he could do nothing. And he didn't know if he could bear it.

He pulled in another deep breath, fighting to satiate his lungs against the compactness of a chest filled with an immense and tangible ache. His hand wandered restlessly, half out of obligation and half out of desperation to the object below. The drag of peace on his heart made him long to escape into the vision quest, long to journey until he found the answers to the questions that were beating him down. Long to search until he unearthed something—_anything—_that could somehow quiet the merciless pounding of this internal inquisition.

_If he had been there, he could have done something._

_He could have tried harder, fought more valiantly, sought revenge with just that much more tenacity.._

_What if the crew of the Val Jean could have made the difference, tipped the scales in the favor of the Maquis?_

_What if their disappearance into the Badlands had foreshadowed the leading edge of this tidal wave of mass destruction?_

_What if they…_

_What if he…_

_What if, what if, what if…_

The thoughts drove their razor-sharp edges relentlessly into Chakotay's brain until he thought he might be sick with the pain of it all. His hand ripped from its tenuous contact with the akoonah, sending it skittering away from him, the river stone slipping from trembling fingers and thudding to the floor of his quarters. He stood, staring down at the half-wreckage below him, the guise of his solace turned torturous.

Then he looked away. It was too much.

He fought the urge yet again to give his agony a voice, a crescendo of pain that would surely cleanse him if it didn't crush him first. He fought to keep it inside, to compartmentalize, to remember who he was and who he had become. He fought for control for the first time in a very, very long time.

He fought to _remember_.

Chakotay began to pace the length of his quarters, up and down, back and forth, but no matter how swiftly his legs carried him, his thoughts always seemed to be waiting just within reach. They had died. All of them. And he had done nothing about it. The reality that it wasn't his fault fed him little comfort. The fact that he was stranded seventy thousand light years away in the Delta Quadrant was of little consequence. The bottom line was that he had failed them, and he had failed his obligations to them.

Chakotay wasn't one to ask others to fight his battles. He wasn't one to stand on the sidelines. _He should have been there._ There was no reason for him to be the lucky one yet again. The one who escaped when no one else did.

Somewhere deep within his logic, he knew that the chances of one small ship, one small crew, making any sort of difference at all would have been slim. Most likely, he and the rest of the Maquis now on Voyager would have been destroyed right along with the others.

And then came the most agonizing—and the most likely—realization of all.

_If he had been there, he could have done _nothing.

The Cardassians had won.


	5. Chapter 5

For Better or Worse

Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager, its characters, etc. belong to Paramount.

_The Next Morning_

They each sat quietly at the conference table, absorbed in their own thoughts. The last echoes of footsteps and voices had faded into silence as the rest of the senior staff had exited the room following the morning briefing. But the four of them remained where they were, wrapped up within their personal struggles, not even cognizant of the presence of the others.

The staff meeting had been unusually somber, perhaps because of the turmoil of emotions emanating from four of its participants. They had calmly discussed the possibilities—or lack thereof—for repairing the Hirogen communications array and quickly dismissed the suggestions as implausible. The conclusion was that their only hope of further communications relied upon encountering some other type of alien technology along the way. Even the glimmer of hope that they would be able to eventually unscramble the message from Starfleet Command offered little in the way of optimism. After all, the Doctor had spoken directly with Headquarters—if there was some incredible new technology to bring them home faster, surely they would have at least mentioned it to him.

Neelix had tried to offer a bright cheeriness to the group, but even he was unable to dispel the gloom. Harry and Seven had batted ideas back and forth, with an occasional interjection from B'Elanna as to the feasibility of each notion, but to no avail. After quietly expounding upon the matter for long, excruciating minutes, they had solemnly tabled the topic, and Kathryn had dismissed them. For now, there was nothing they could do.

They were back to being truly alone, just as they had been from the beginning. It weighed heavily on all of them for different reasons. Some were hit with the loss of anticipation while others with a reality that could no longer be denied. But anyway they looked at it, the outcome was the same. There wouldn't be any more letters from home, at least not any time soon.

But for the four of them who remained at the table, their thoughts weren't on any possible future transmissions or hope of re-establishing contact with the Alpha Quadrant. Their minds and hearts were drowning in the messages they had already received. For so many reasons that not one of them could even begin to elucidate to the others. There were no words in any of their various languages for what they each felt.

Tom sat on one side of B'Elanna, his arm unconsciously brushing hers, his gaze fixed on the streaking stars outside of the viewport, attentive yet vaguely unfocused all at once. B'Elanna sat upright and rigid, her hands twisted in clenched fists in front of her, seemingly unaware of even Tom's steady presence at her side. Her eyes boiled with an anger that threatened to erupt at any moment—given even the slightest catalyst. Chakotay was slumped in the chair next to Kathryn, his elbow resting on the table with his chin cupped heavily in his hand. His eyes were dark, made even duskier by the black smudges underneath that testified to a sleepless night. Kathryn held herself ramrod straight, her back barely even nudging the chair cushion behind her. Her arms were crossed so tightly over her chest that she seemed to have caved in on herself. Her chin was lifted in its familiar defiant stance, but the distinct quiver of her lips diminished the strength somehow.

And then, at the same moment in time, all four of them saw one another. As their gazes met, they knew instinctively that they were all thinking the exact same thing.

There was a difference between the ache you could live with—and the ache you couldn't. And they had no choice but to live with it.

For better or worse.

_The End (for now...)_


End file.
